1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for protecting printed circuits from reverse engineering and in particular to a system and method for camouflaging a standard cell based integrated circuit.
2. Description of the Related Art
In today's standard-cell based application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design, the logic function of the chip is modeled and simulated in higher-level hardware description languages (VHDL or VERILOG). It is then synthesized in a silicon compiler (e.g. SYNOPSIS) to generate a netlist using logic cells from a targeted standard-cell library. The netlist will be used in the backend physical design phase to perform the Place and Route of library cells, generating the full circuit layout of the ASIC for manufacturing. The Place and Route process uses an automated computer program placing all logic cells in appropriate locations, then connecting them with metal and via layers according to the connection information in the netlist. ASICs designed using this approach are vulnerable to reverse engineering (RE) attack. RE of an ASIC involves the steps of functional identification of logic cells and the extraction of the cells' connections. With the latest optical and scanning electron microscopic techniques, an ASIC's logic circuits and its wiring network can easily extracted by RE.
In a standard Place and Route process of an ASIC, some unused silicon areas with no logic cells will usually occur during cell placement due to the requirement of efficient routing. The presence of the unused silicon areas provides extra information, like the cell boundaries, to the reverse engineering process. RE usually starts the functional identification of logic cells near the unused silicon areas of the ASIC.
The desire to protect hardware and associated intellectual property from reverse engineering and cloning has long been present in commercial and government applications. A conventional integrated circuit is susceptible to the aforementioned RE using a variety of techniques that analyze the manufactured silicon die and extract a functional circuit model. Once the functional circuit model is extracted, a counterfeit device can be produced that performs the same function as the original circuit, or a function that is intentionally altered with a Trojan circuit. Alternately, a digital circuit may then be emulated by an off-the-shelf microprocessor or Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA).
Camouflage techniques have been used to protect logic cells in Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) against reverse engineering attacks since the late 1980s. Such systems attempt to fill open spaces in layers with metals and via that are appear functional, but are not. While such methods make RE difficult, additional techniques are needed to further discourage RE of such circuits.
What is needed is are additional techniques that can be used either independently from or in conjunction with the above techniques to further discourage RE. This disclosure describes such techniques.